Aguiar-Branco asks lawmakers to tear down all barriers between elected officials and voters

This Thursday, the President of the Assembly of the Republic swore in the standing parliamentary committees of the new Legislative Assembly, on this occasion he invoked the spirit of April and asked the deputies to remove all barriers placed between elected officials and voters.

José Pedro Aguiar Branco first took the oath of office in the Constitutional Affairs Committee, which will be headed by the social democrat Paula Cardoso, and then proceeded to the first meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which will again be headed by the socialist Sergio Sousa Pinto. This afternoon he will inaugurate the National Defense Commission.

In his first brief address to the Constitutional Affairs Committee, the President of the Assembly of the Republic referred to his recent decision to order the removal of the grating installed at the entrance to the stairs leading to the main entrance to Parliament. An act he called “symbolic” to highlight the value of freedom as April 25, 1974 marks its 50th anniversary.

“This is a symbolic decision, but it has a lot of significance, which I think is extremely important as we celebrate the 50th anniversary on April 25th. What we need to do here, too, is remove the barriers that often separate the elected from the voters. “, he decreed.

Even in his speech before the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, former Social Democratic Minister José Pedro Aguiar-Branco defended the thesis that “the most mediated expression of life in the Assembly of the Republic occurs either in commissions of inquiry or in heated debates.” that take place, take place in plenary session.”

“In standing committees, a lot of the hard work is done regarding the legislative process or oversight of government or public administration, with less heated debate. But people outside have no idea about the work done. They don’t know about the work of very important and significant development,” he emphasized.

As a solution, the President of the Assembly of the Republic asked the deputies to “do everything” so that knowledge about their work reaches citizens, with the aim of increasing the “qualification of democracy” and the existence of “a more true perception of the work of the deputy and the standing committees.”

José Pedro Aguiar-Branco later identified the Committee on Constitutional Affairs as “an important pillar born on April 25” in 1974.

“This is primarily an April commission. What is done here, and what is done becomes known about what is done, structures our democracy,” he said.

Further, after the opening of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, the President of the Assembly of the Republic referred to the complexity of the current global situation and emphasized that “important tasks” await the deputies of this committee dealing with foreign policy.

He then turned to history to relativize the analysis that is usually carried out in the present.

“We always think that the moment we live in is the most difficult. But when we look at History, we see that this conclusion is not always the most appropriate,” he said. Socialist Sergio Sousa Pinto added: “These are difficult times by definition.”